


Changing Destiny

by juxtapose



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 20:53:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juxtapose/pseuds/juxtapose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the year 2013, and Merlin crosses paths with someone he wants more than anything to do away with once and for all. But maybe destiny isn't so set in stone...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changing Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this as a fic-exchange type thing for my lovely friend Courtney (lunastellaris on tumblr), and she seemed to really like it which I was immensely glad for. I hope you all enjoy it as well!

Having lived for centuries now, Merlin finds nothing surprises him anymore.

Day after day, decade after decade is the same---humans partaking in silly activities like falling in love and dying for each other. Merlin wouldn’t know anything about that. No, not at all.

The amount of times he’s attempted to purge it all from his memory---the death, the pain, the feeling of both killing and letting die because destiny was the cruelest god of them all---is still increasing in number. No magic spell could ever erase the story fate had handwritten for Merlin, for Camelot . . . for King Arthur, a man who loved and forgave too much, receiving so little of the same in return.

Having lived through centuries alone, Merlin has become a bitter man. He can change his appearance all he wants, but he is old, and tired, and so very, very bitter.

This is why when Merlin first senses her presence, trickling up and down his spine and causing the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck to stand up, he wants to kill her for taking away a life full of such promise. One life---his and Arthur’s, _together_. Gone.

He wants to kill Morgana Pendragon all over again.

* * *

“. . . Sir? Sir, excuse me. Sorry.”

Merlin blinks once. Twice. Forces his vision to focus on the young woman standing before him, on the other side of the front desk in the tiny magic shop.

(Each time he shuffles through the rickety doors of the tiny building off Wickeden Street at 8AM to open shop, he wonders if Arthur would mock him for this. Opening a magic shop in the twenty-first century on a London street corner, when all anyone wants to do these days is send text messages and watch television. “Are you daft, Merlin?” he imagines the King muttering with a shake of his head, “Nobody believes in magic anymore.”

And yet...maybe, if Arthur were here with him, he’d try to help bring magic back to the world.

But these are musings for another time.)

He clasps his hands behind his back. Tries not to bore holes in the woman’s big green-blue eyes and says, “How can I help you?”

“I . . . this is the magic shop, isn’t it?” She runs a hand through her raven hair, smiling nervously. She speaks in an Irish brogue. “There’s no sign on the front of the building, but Mapquest says I have the right address---”

“This is it, yeah,” Merlin interrupts. He watches the smile on her face spread wider with relief. Oh, yes. There is no mistake. Merlin’s very core hums for these moments, letting him know that someone from his past has come again now that Destiny has allowed it.

This is the Lady Morgana Pendragon. The woman who had lent a willing hand in killing the King. Merlin’s king.

Only she doesn’t know it yet. ‘Remember’ would be the more appropriate term, Merlin figures. He squeezes his right hand with his left behind his back until he feels his fingernails puncture skin.

“Oh, good. I was hoping this was it. See, I...I didn’t really know where else to go.” She crosses her arms over her chest, laughs a little humorlessly, averts her eyes to the ground. “That sounds completely nutty, doesn’t it? Let me start over.” She looks up, clears her throat, extends her hand. “Hi. I’m Morgana.”

_I know._ Merlin offers the hand that isn’t dripping with blood, takes it, feels the buzz beneath his skin as the time-rusted connection is made. “Merlin.”

Morgana takes it upon herself to take a few steps around the counter and into the shop, observing the many little trinkets and meticulously-placed potions and extracts decorating the shelves (Merlin might have been a messy manservant, but as a storekeeper he has to admit he’s top-notch. Maybe it’s just because he has a lot of time on his hands...). “Do you own this place? You look awfully young.”

“Appearances are deceiving.” Merlin finds he loves playing the Sorcerer-of-Vague-Statements card these days to freak out the tourists who visit. He’d learned from the best, of course---Kilgharrah was about as cryptic as they came. “Is there something in particular you needed?” he prods, very much wanting to get this interaction over with. _A dagger, maybe? A traitorous little sidekick named Mordred?_

Morgana turns to him again, and the sudden sadness in her eyes pushes against Merlin’s feelings of resentment---a contradiction. “I need help.”

Oh. Well, there’s a surprise indeed.

* * *

The flower vase hovers between them in mid-air, and through the glass Merlin can see Morgana’s eyes flashing an exuberant gold. Her brow is furrowed with a combination of concentration and fear of what is happening to her.

Merlin understands.

She blinks, a sliver of a tear trickling down her cheek, and the vase falls to the table with a shatter, water and petals shards of glass spilling and tumbling everywhere. “Oh---oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean---”

“ _Feormian._ ” Merlin holds out a hand, and in an instant the back room of the magic shop is spotless again. Morgana sits back in her chair, eyes wide. He gives her a moment to collect herself, and asks, “How long have you been experiencing these . . .” He gestures awkwardly between the two of them. “Abilities?”

Morgana shrugs a little, sniffling. “About six months now. I keep having these . . . these _nightmares_ . . . They’re awful. And when I wake up, I feel like there’s something inside me just . . . just waiting to burst, and when it does . . .” She gulps audibly. “Sometimes there’s fire. Other times I can just look at a mirror and it shatters . . . I nearly scared my flatmate out of the kitchen the other night when I made the pots and pans in the cupboards rattle. I don’t _mean_ to. It just . . . comes over me and I can’t control it. It’s terrible. I don’t know what to do.”

Merlin pretends he doesn’t notice the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. However, or whenever Morgana had been reborn, this had been bound to happen sometime.

She is destined to wield great power, just as he is. _Only she will use it to destroy. To kill. To push away everything she holds dear . . ._

Unless.

He leans forward, placing his elbows on the table and folding his hands. “There are others like you out there, Morgana.”

Morgana’s lashes flutter closed as she takes in a deep breath. “I figured. Y’know, with your . . . impeccable clean-up job just now.” A hint of an amused grin dances across her features.

And Merlin can’t help but return it with a mutter of, “Being a manservant with about eighty chores to do at one time had its advantages.”

“What?”

“Nevermind.”

He watches Morgana look at him quizzically, like he’s something out of a storybook. To her, he is. To this girl, he’s just some bloke named Merlin with abilities like hers with whom she might be able to connect on some level because she’s got no one else to turn to.

To her, he’s not Emrys. He’s not the most powerful warlock of all time.

He’s not her enemy.

In turn, Merlin knows that she is not his.

And now, it is his job to keep it that way.

This, Merlin realizes, is fate’s way of allowing him a second chance.

* * *

Morgana stops by the shop everyday when her uni classes let out, and she and Merlin spend an hour or so honing in on her magic.

Merlin tells her not to be afraid.

Merlin teaches her how to be one with the elements.

And most importantly, Merlin reiterates the one fact, the four words that should have been spoken to her centuries ago to keep her from spiraling into a life of ruin:

“You are not alone.”

* * *

The more time they spend together, the more Morgana reminds him of the person he knew in the early days of his life in Camelot.

She invites herself over to his apartment on weekends---the nerve of her, seriously; just because she’d been the King’s ward in a past life doesn’t mean she has the right to raid Merlin’s fridge---and Merlin finds himself connecting with someone for the first time in a very long time, and of course it happens to be the one person he’d been destined to defeat, destroy, despise.

He hates himself for a while. He falls asleep every night thinking of Arthur and how he’s betrayed him by helping the girl who’d laughed at his misery, reveled in his pain so long ago.

“Merlin, can I ask you something?”

Her voice brings him out of his thoughts. They’re sitting side-by-side on his tattered couch. “Yes?”

“You always talk about how magic was ‘wiped out.’ How there’s so few people . . . people like us left in the world. Why is that?”

He avoids her gaze and replies, “Too many people used magic for the wrong reasons, Morgana. Too many mistakes were made, too many lives taken. Power makes people mad.” _It made you mad._ “Those of us left can’t risk exposing what we are. I don’t think the world is ready for magic again just yet.”

“I see,” she replies solemnly, bringing her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around herself. “But I don’t think magic should be hidden away, because sometimes you have to do what you believe is right, by whatever means necessary. Magic can be that force, you know? A force for what’s right.” A dreamy look passes across her face for a fraction of a second before she sighs and commands, “Pass the crisps, will you?”

It’s then Merlin realizes that this spunky, enthusiastic, intelligent and utterly determined girl is the Morgana he used to know. She always had been.

The difference is she’s on the right track---or at least Merlin hopes---and for the first time in decades he finally feels like he’s doing something good.

* * * 

“How old are you, really?” They’re sitting on a bench. It’s New Years’ Eve. Morgana nudges his arm.

“Twenty-three, just like you.”

“I said _really_. And don’t lie to me, Merlin. I can tell when you lie, now, because your face turns red.”

“Five-hundred and thirty.”

She swats his arm. “For God’s sake, Merlin. Getting a straight answer out of you is like pulling teeth.”

He’s about to reply when the clock strikes twelve. Morgana gives him a kiss on the cheek and whispers, “Happy New Year,” and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he wasn’t lying.

* * *

Merlin is making tea in his dingy apartment when it happens.

Morgana bursts through the door, and he’s barely got time to make it to the living room before he realizes what’s happened---but the tears streaming down her face, the panic in her expression, make it quite clear to Merlin.

She remembers. It had been inevitable---just a matter of waiting, which Merlin has gotten quite good at in the last few centuries.

Morgana remembers everything. Every path she chose to take so long ago, and every moment that has led to this one, standing in Merlin’s apartment as he watches her helplessly, for he knows this is something she must work out on her own.

“You . . .” He can practically feel the anger bubbling in Morgana’s very blood. He says nothing, listens to the snarled syllables from behind her gritted teeth: “What . . . what did you do to me? This is _your_ fault, Emrys. All your fault!”

She charges toward him, ramming her fists against his chest, screeching, betrayal and confusion and hatred and something else Merlin can’t pinpoint echoing in her wails.

Merlin could send her into the wall with a simple syllable. He could kill her in an instant. Here she is, close enough that he can hear her heartbeat, and all it takes is one spell, one motion . . . 

He wraps his arms around her, and holds her.

Morgana’s screams dissolve into sobs, and all he can make out between the tears is the repeated phrase: “What have I done? What have I done?”

Merlin knows now that it is too late for him to go back on this. In his time with Morgana, he has learned her every idiosyncrasy, memorized the inflections of her voice and the music notes of magic purring under her skin.

_I love her_ , he thinks as he holds her, and as they both drop to their knees on the hardwood floor, he realizes the emotion has been buried so deep within him for so long that he had almost forgotten it existed, until now.

He reminds her in a whisper, “You’re not alone,” because it’s all he can do. When she looks up at him, gaze electric and fiery and so _very_ Morgana (of past _and_ present), he realizes _this_ is the ‘something else.’

When she kisses him, Merlin finds that you can, in fact, change destiny.

* * *

“Is it time?” Morgana’s voice is tinged with a combination of apprehension and excitement. Her magic is buzzing beside Merlin, a presence he still hasn’t gotten used to, but welcomes all the same.

Merlin takes her hand in his, closing his eyes. “Yes. I can feel it.”

They stand together on the shore’s edge, and silence takes them both for a while. It is a silence of camaraderie, of mutual trust, between two people who had once been called one another’s doom.

It is new, and it is enough to awaken something long past. 

A hand reaches up from the depths of Avalon Lake, and the sunset outlines it in gold.

King Arthur lives again.

Not one---but two magical beings, after centuries of waiting, wade into the water to pull him above the surface.


End file.
